Aria
The transition was instant. There was no vertigo, no lurch of the stomach, no sensation of falling through the world’s floor. One heartbeat I was moving through the damp, suffocating darkness of a subterranean root system; the next, the soles of my boots slapped against polished white stone, and I was blinded by the searing brilliance of two suns.
The light was aggressive, a physical weight against my retinas after the gloom of the cavern. I threw a hand up, squinting through my fingers as my eyes watered, trying to adjust to the assault of gold and azure.
The air here was thin, making my lungs work harder to draw a breath. It smelled impossibly sweet, cloying like nectar and overripe peaches left in the sun too long. But underneath that divine perfume lay a sharp, jagged edge of rot, the scent of meat spoiling in the heat. It turned my stomach, a visceral warning that despite the brightness, something here was dead.
"By the stars," Elias breathed.
We had emerged in the center of a sprawling circular plaza lined with colossally scaled statues of the Olympians. It was breathtakingly beautiful, a testament to an arrogance thatspanned millennia, rows of fluted marble columns, fountains where water floated in impossible spheres, and hanging gardens that defied gravity, trailing vines of silver and gold into the open air.
And it was cracking.
A jagged fissure, wide enough to swallow a horse, zigzagged through the pristine white pavement of the plaza, leaking a terrifying gray mist. The statue of Apollo, fifty feet tall and carved from sunstone, had been sheared off at the neck, its head lying shattered near the base of the plinth. The water floating in the fountains was flowing backward, retreating into the stone as if afraid to touch the air.
"It’s broken," Flynn whispered, his voice low and guttural. He was turning in a slow circle, his nose wrinkling as he scented the air, the hackles of his shaggy hair rising. "The whole place, it smells wrong. Like a wound that didn't heal right."
I looked past the immediate ruin to the horizon. The sky in the distance wasn't the calm violet of the paintings in the Citadel archives. It was bruised, choked with roiling smoke that almost blotted out the strange twin suns. The main part of the city, that gleaming white metropolis I somehow recognized, was under fire. But there were no armies, no siege engines, no soldiers scaling the walls.
It was being besieged by the sky itself.
A vortex of absolute, light-devouring blackness swirled at the edges of the horizon, a funnel cloud of destruction. Lightning, silent and blood-red, arced from the storm, striking the golden domes of the distant palaces. Where the red bolts hit, stone didn't shatter; it simply ceased to exist, erased from reality.
"By the Fates," Elias whispered, his turquoise eyes wide with a sorrow that looked ancient. "It isn't attacking the city. It's digesting it."
"We need to move," Kaelen snapped. The Dragon Prince had already shifted into a combat stance, his golden eyes darting across the desolate garden, analyzing angles and cover. "The stability of this plane is failing. If we’re caught in the open when that storm touches down, we will be unmade."
We started to move, threading our way through the wreckage of the plaza, stepping over chunks of marble that had once been the faces of gods. But we hadn't taken ten steps when a sound stopped us cold.
It wasn't the silent thunder of the storm. It wasn't the roar of a monster.
It was a voice. Sharp and imperious.
"Intruders!"
The shout echoed from a terrace high above us. I looked up, shielding my eyes. A squad of Sentinels, smaller than the behemoth we had dismantled before, but clad in the same armor, was rushing toward the marble railing, their spears lowering in unison to point at our hearts.
"Hold," Kaelen ordered, stepping in front of me, his body becoming a shield. His hands began to glow with that terrifying, molten heat.
"No," I said, my voice quiet but firm. I moved past him, ignoring the sharp intake of breath from Flynn.
I felt the bond between us surging, a tangled knot of fire, wind, and lightning begging for release. We may have been hiding before, but not anymore.
Now, we needed to be loud.
We needed to be undeniable.
I looked up at the Sentinels on the balcony. I didn't see threats to be feared. My logistical mind disassembled them instantly: elevation advantage, superior numbers, restricted chokepoint. They weren't soldiers. They were obstacles.
I raised my right hand, palm open. In my mind, I reached for the bond, channeling Elias’s perception to lock onto their spiritual anchors, and pulling deep on the reservoir of Kaelen’s raw, domineering power.
"Kneel," I commanded.
It wasn't a suggestion or a plea. I made a localized gravity well, an edict amplified by the resonance of the Titan blood I apparently still carried in my bones.
The effect was instantaneous and violent. The Sentinels didn't just kneel; they were slammed into the marble floor as if the atmosphere had suddenly turned to lead. Armor crumpled inward with the screech of tearing metal. Spear shafts shattered. They were pinned flat, unable to even twitch, crushed by the sheer weight of my voice.
"We aren't here for the guards," I declared, my voice unnaturally magnified by the magic, echoing off the crumbling towers of the gods and rolling like thunder across the plaza. "We want the Queen. We want Hera."
